HERMAN OF SCHILDESCHE

Or of Westphalia, theologian and administrator; b. Schildesche (Schilditz), Sept. 8, c. 1290; d. Würzburg, July 8, 1357. Herman entered the augustinian order at Herford, where he made his novitiate. He did his early studies at Osnabrück; his study of theology, most probably at Erfurt or Magdeburg, though he may have spent the last three of the five years prescribed at the Augustinian studium in Paris. He was ordained toward the end of these studies; his winning a lectorship crowned their completion. He taught with distinction at Magdeburg (1317?–24), at Erfurt (1324–28?), and at Paris (1330–35). In the earlier years of his stay in Paris, he obtained first a bachelor's and then a master's degree in theology. He was provincial of his own Augustinian province of Saxony and Thuringia (1337–39); in 1338 he served as one of a commission of three sent by the German bishops to avignon to effect a reconciliation between Pope benedict xii and Louis IV, the Bavarian. He spent his later years (1340–57) in Würzburg, where he not only lectured regularly in theology to the clerics of that diocese but, from 1342 at least, was vicar-general (the first) and mainor paenitentiarius. His upright, gentle character won him many friends there. Of the more than 30 works that Herman wrote, only 11 are extant. They dealt with various aspects of theology (dogmatic, moral, pastoral, ascetical, and mystical), and with exegesis, philosophy, and law. Two of them—the pastoral Speculum manuale sacerdotum and his Introductorium iuris, a lexicon—were widely used.

Bibliography: Sources. a. zumkeller, Schrifttum und Lehre des Hermann von Schildesche (Würzburg 1959). jordan of quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum (1357 ), ed. r. arbesmann and w. hÜmpfner (New York 1943) 240–241, 476. Literature. a. zumkeller, Hermann von Schildesche, O.E.S.A., †8 Juli 1357 (Würzburg 1957); Augustiniana 7 (1957), passim; 8 (1958) 113–128; "Wiedergefundene exegetische Werke Hermanns von Schildesche," Augustinianum 1 (1961) 236–272, 452–503. o. mazal, "Handschriften mittelalterlicher Augustiner-Eremiten in der österreichischen Nationalbibliothek," ibid. 4 (1964) 291–296. a. zumkeller, "Manuskripte von Werken der Autoren des Augustiner-Eremitenordens in metteleuropäischen Bibliotheken," Augustiniana 11 (1961) 12 (1962) 27–43.

[j. e. bresnahan]